Hospitality and Social Media Management

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Nowadays, the main purpose of Facebook is to develop and build an open world where all the people around is connected (Facebook, 2013). Thus, individuals around the world are using Facebook to stay connected and in contact with their groups and people of interest (relatives, friends, colleagues, etc.) expressing and sharing their thoughts and ideas and this behavior within social media networks, especially on Facebook has become normal and natural (Anderson, 2010).

In the other hand, it has been proven by several researchers that a good use and management of Facebook or any Social Media (SM) can have a great potential in order to develop a source of costumers and stakeholders for a business (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010).

In this context, this author and his colleague have created and managed a Facebook page for Romanoff Restaurant, a “traditional cuisine of Russian nobility” restaurant situated in the city of Moscow, Russia. Thus, we decided to use Facebook because this social network it is very famous around the five continents with 1.23 billion worldwide connected and active users in the last year (Kiss, 2014). Furthermore, the age group between 45 and 54 years because it has grown by 45 percent since the beginning of 2013, 86 percent of users are outside the United States and 73 percent of its users have higher annual income to $ 75,000 (Business Insider, 2013), and this support the election of our target market which is the Baby boomer generation (35-50 years old) and with high income (10000 CHF. Per month).

Therefore, the objectives in one month of managing the Facebook page of Romanoff Restaurant were:

Increase awareness about the brand, to reach 100 Likes.

Regularly updating the content to reach at least 5% of engagement rate.

Increase awareness about the traditional Russian dining and dishes by reaching minimum 40-50 people per post.

The first action in order to achieve these objectives was to divide the target market in two main segments: national and international according to their needs and preferences, occupations, geographic and demographic characteristics, behavioral and technographic aspects with the purpose of identify potential consumers by identifying characteristics within and outside of the target market, and thereby obtain a better result in terms of sales and distribution (Kotler and Keller, 2009) of Romanoff products and service through Facebook. Furthermore, a buyer persona which is archetype of individual, identifiable person who buys and can buy your products or significantly influences the decision (Albee, 2010), was created with the purpose of have a profile of the ideal customer (age, sex, occupation, hobbies, income, personality, civil state, motivations, preferred social network, buying process, etc.) and to create a strategic e-marketing campaign with clear, interactive and attractive messages while having clear what we can expect from them (Albee, 2010).

In order to achieve these objectives, the management team of team decided to implement as strategy the of 8 success criteria model of Owyang, Tran and Webber (2010), focusing in depth on 5 first criterion.

Following the first 5 steps of the above model (Owyang, Tran and Webber, 2010), the following was done:

Establish the expectations for the customers from the Romanoff page, the expectations of the page for the customers and rules and regulations of the page.

3. Keep the Romanoff Restaurant page up to date and posting new contents in the correct time about topics on interest such as: menu and recipes of the restaurant, the brand and historic events related to the historical background of the restaurant on daily basis.

4. Posts written in 1st person in conversational and friendly tone in order to create a close relationship and engagement with the real and potential customers and provide an admin signature on each post and comment.

5. Two – way interaction between the customer and Romanoff page, reply comments within 24 hours and thank the customers for participate and interact with Romanoff Restaurant.

Implementing this strategy, the administrators of Romanoff Restaurant Facebook succeed in meet the established objectives:

Reach 100 likes

Reach at least 5% of engagement rate.

Reaching minimum 40-50 people per post.

According to these the results is very important to highlight some important points. First of all the use of an e-marketing strategy is essential to obtain good results and reach the organizations objectives, and in this particular case the 8 Success Criteria Model (Owyang, Tran and Webber, 2010) was used but in order to obtain better results had to be used the other three criteria (Enable Peer-to-Peer Interactions, Foster Advocacy and Solicit A call to Action). Moreover, is evident the lack of video content, and this may have been very useful post to attract more customers and increase the engagement and reach level as well as increase the number of likes. Furthermore, is very important to keep in mind that the of a specific social network to promote the restaurant will depend in great measure on your target market (Kadushin, 2013), according to this it would very important to consider to create other page for the restaurant in Vkontakte, internationallyknownas VK, because a great part of the target are Russian speakers business people and this social network is the most famous in Russia with more than 100 million active users around the world and is available in 38 languages (VK.com, 2013). Thus, if Romanoff Restaurant decides to use VK they would probably increase their reach and engagement within Russian business people and probably increase its market share among the use of other sales channel within other social network (Hartley, 2010).

Then we can conclude along this article that the use of Facebook can influence in great measure the business performance of Romanoff Restaurant or any other business, especially now that when we are experimenting a fast raising up of Social Networks around the world and is imperative be at the vanguard in be updated with new trends within the key social media channels and in invest in social media as one of the primary objectives of Romanoff marketing strategy because nowadays brands have to be socially orientated since in the last years Social Media is a strategic marketing channel (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010).

Currently social networks in particular and the environment in general 2.0 have shown that users do an increasingly widespread , use of alternatives to traditional ways to present their complaints, their feelings toward a brand , their concerns, or needs.

The basis of the social media is the participation and power of consumers. Users of content generators, and also emit reviews or opinions about products or services of companies. Given the warnings on the participation of companies in the social media, people are communicating and talking about your company, if you are not have a big problem (Kerpen, 2011).

It is an evolution of the marketing based on the 4 P’s ( product, price , promotion and distribution) to the 4 C ‘s, primary functions of social software : communication, cooperation and liaison and collaboration, and hence arise 4C ‘s of social media marketing : content, context , and community connections (Chaffey and Smith, 2008).

In this context, the deployment of current marketing strategies with a fundamental role of information technology and communication, the management of customer relationships has led to a new concept: CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Decision making cannot rely solely on intuition, but must be based on current and accurate about every customer; their information needs and behavior. This will be a critical factor in the pursuit of success (Evans, O’Malley and Peterson, 2004). Therefore, CRM is diversely understood as customer relationship marketing and/or customer relationship management. Although in relation with relationship marketing, the aim of CRM is based on the technology which tries to manage all customer contact points in order to simplify the incorporation of various database systems to provide a single picture of the customer.

SOCIAL CRM, THE NEW TREND.

For every company, the CRM represents the development of business activities necessary to identify, acquire, investigate and retain loyal customers and profitable to deliver the right product or service to the right customer through the right channel, at the right time and the right cost. Hence, CRM integrates sales, marketing, service, resource planning and enterprise management functions of the supply chain through automation of business processes, technology solutions and information resources in regards to maximize contact with each customer or user (Galbreath and Rogers, cf. Law, 2003).

In the other hand, we have that the CRM for customers which represents simplicity and confidence to shape complete their transactions, regardless of the means by which the interaction of. (Gulati and Garino, 2000 cf. Chen and Popovich 2003). The managing relationships with them effectively and efficiently influence the satisfaction and retention thereof. (Reichheld, et al, 1993 cf. Chen and Popovich, 2003). The CRM also provides good results for companies such as increase sales and reduce costs in their operations (Chen and Popovich, 2003).

In this sense, to “really learn of the user or customer”, nowadays we need to listen to: the social and active listening is the basis of all this strategy. Something that does not differ too much from traditional CRM, which is formed as the result of Social CRM, trying to complement what is already collecting and analyzing the client file. Thus, a good Social CRM solution is one that not only integrates Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but also contact information, email services, communications and historical information residing in the company CRM systems (Kerpen, 2011).

CONCLUSION…. WHY DO WE HAVE TO APPLY IT IN OUR COMPANIES?

According to PGreenblog (2009), Social CRM is ” a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation”.

Consistently uses Social Media evolve and increasingly what Social is adopted by users at an extraordinary rate , a clear example is to listen daily phrases like ” Find me on Facebook “, ” I read it on Twitter ,” “Question on Twitter or Facebook ” ” you’re already on Google+ , ” among many others.

Today we know that people are most of their time online on social networks and prefer to be contacted via these new media.

We also know that many companies are already making efforts to respond to the market needs through social networks, allocating resources to administer accounts and interact. But the evolution of social networks expands used as Marketing, Sales, and Service customer among others and in addition, it is common to see brands with over 50,000 fans and followers or a resource assigned to service all those user accounts.

If we analyze the relationship of company resources to the use of social media and the number of users by brand or company that is going to be winning over time, definitely the effort in social networks must evolve to not only pond in just generating Presence and Promotion for the company without obtaining clear and tangible benefits across the Social Media. In this sense, companies must evolve, defining internal and external strategies supported by a technology platform to support them to achieve their goals.

Maintaining privacy in an increasingly globalized milieu as the internet, is not a very easy task to perform and in the other hand we have that social networks have been basically the latest innovation, which has affected more directly to users in this aspect (invasion of privacy).

Nowadays, one of the biggest issues that we found in the use of social media is the invasion of privacy in their users, which are increasingly uncomfortable with the level of access that all social network companies have to their information.

As with any other aspect of the security and protection of private information, is very important that the social media companies work on the development of new security protocols with the objective of protecting private information of their customers.However, most users of most famous social networks such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Pinterest, etc., are not aware about the risk that takes upload private information in these sites and in the other hand they become vulnerable to any theft of information. In this sense, is very important to work to raise awareness in all users and customers about the dangers they face when using social networks.

¿Why is so important to think about our privacy?

This question you have always to keep in mind, when you want to open an account in any social network and share your personal information, because after that you will be exposed in the web. While most of the users think in share information of their private life and socialize within social networks, their information may be being used by other people with bad purposes.

But some users exhibitionism has no limits, and the next level as far as exposure is concerned personal data came with the addition of Geo-location in social networks.With the boom of these networks in the new generation mobiles (iPhone, Android …) offers users the ability to display the social network the exact geographical point where they are at all times thanks to the GPS technology included on this type of mobile devices. Sometimes the parameters that control the activity in these applications are not very clear, and if you do not want to be tracked by satellites that fly over our heads, and that location is used with purpose not authorized by us, we must control these parameters to ensure that this does not take place, or control with whom we share so much information.

As an illustration of the problems that this technology can bring, imagine accepting a friend request from someone you do not know personally, if we don´t have properly configured privacy options in our profile and we are active users of the social network, that user could access all our movements and find out when we are in each location.Every instant message you sent through the mobile app, such as Facebook Messenger or others, could allow trace your current location on a Bing map because they have a pushpin corresponding to precise location. For this reason, we can say that social media sites are renowned for privacy invasion (Bever, 2014).

However, technology makes our lives more practical and easier but it’s important to make sure we’re not allowing it to completely invade our privacy. For this reason it’s important to be very careful about the information we store on our devices (cell phones, laptop, tablet, etc.). In this sense, we can say that in certain situations it might be better to use other ways of storing information—such as in a personal safe or safe deposit box—to make sure it remains private (Myhre, 2013).

Thus, we can find out that the primary problem is that users of social nets have not been trained on how to oversee their accounts in a smart and safe form by the providers of these social nets and also encourage its users to understand thoroughly all the terms and conditions of their service.

In addition to the above, I believe all suppliers must inform its users in a very objective, clear and open about the managing of their personal information. Should be provided easy and intelligible information about the impact of upload personal information on their profiles, security risks and possible legal access, as well as improve some online form of training users in onlie privacy.